WSL2 and Hyper-V Requirement

Docker Desktop for Windows
1

I am new to Docker and WSL2 but I was wondering why Hyper-V was required to get Docker Desktop for Windows to run in WSL2. It seems that the only Windows features I needed to get WSL2 up and running was “Windows Subsystem for Linux” and “Virtual Machine Platform”, but Docker for Windows won’t run without installing Hyper-V. Is there something I’m missing or is this a WSL1 requirement?

Thank you,
Eric

2

Docker Desktop (the standard edition) runs the containers in a virtual machine in Hyper-V. The combination of Docker Desktop with WSL2 is a new and still experimental technology. You need Desktop >= 2.1.5 from the edge channel together with Win 10 insider build >= 18980 to use it.

3

Thank you. I have a supported insider build with WSL2 running on it.

I’m guessing that the Docker Desktop application still requires the Hyper-V and Container Windows 10 features since WSL2 support is still in the experimental phase, I was just wondering if there are plans to remove the dependency on those Windows features since they technically aren’t required for WSL2.

4

After some experimentation, it looks like those Windows features can be removed once the Docker Desktop application is switched to WSL2 mode.

5

In this post on Docker Engineering the statement is clear: “We will replace the Hyper-V VM we currently use by a WSL 2 integration package.”

6

Thank you very much for your help. That clears things up for me.